Guild Wars 2

Man this is a cool Idea. Good luck to you guys and happy dungeoning!

I see so many people in this subforum who seem genuinely interested in doing dungeons but keep getting told this nonsense that they have to be 80 to even run AC or they need to be full berserker gear. While I get some people only want to get through a path as quickly as possible just to get their tokens some of us actually just enjoy doing the dungeon itself and if it takes me an extra 5 minutes because my party isn’t full berserker with 4 warriors and a mesmer I am okay with that. Anet went through all the trouble of making all these different builds and people shouldn’t be penalized because a select few want to only go the fastest route. Hopefully Anet comes up with a boss buff that makes it harder for groups like that so they can’t do the runs quite as fast and then things will even back out. That and make it so that multiple condition damage characters don’t have as high a chance of stepping on each others toes. Don’t get me wrong if people want to play full berserker they should be able to, but it shouldn’t be that the entire game becomes everyone runs full berserker because it greatly outshines any other setup. We’d be going back to the Ursan build days of GW1 and that was a dark time for the game.

I’m curious, what were the Ursan build days? I didn’t play gw1.

Great Idea Dramen,

My guild currently does the same thing for our members, but we would be interested in teaming up with you on this to help the community. Let me know if you need any help.

Cheers

laharl.8435:

I’m curious, what were the Ursan build days? I didn’t play gw1.

It was an elite skill linked to a reputation/title that changed your skill set and increased your max hp/armor. Basically made everyone super tanky OP damage dealers, honestly it wasn’t a “dark day”, it made really hard content available to casual players and it wasn’t faster than organized spike teams. Some people just like to exaggerate.

When Eye of the North came out you had a reputation title track with the Norn that determined the power of any PvE only skills that came from Norn NPCs. One of those was an elite skill called Ursan Form. It was the ancestor of the transformation elites norn have, it replaced all your skills with Ursan skills, dependent only on your title rank. Before long everyone playing every class was running this elite and it had a negative effect on endgame content. It also, in my own opinion since I played a monk, lowered the skill level of the monk community as a whole since a specific monk healing build came up as a result of this and for a long time you had players thinking it was the single greatest monk build created for any situation. It took six months before Anet finally nerfed that elite but many monks still used that build even though it was awful anywhere that enemies could shatter enchantments since its effectiveness was dependent on a single enchantment and it lacked decent hex and condition removal. Berserker gear is starting to take Guild Wars 2 in the same direction of replacing every other setup so hopefully Anet does something soon to either make other setups just as viable or add some sort of mechanic that slows down how quickly this setup can do dungeons. They don’t need to beat it to death with the nerf bat but it shouldn’t be so much better than any other gear setup that no one wants to run anything else. What it is doing however is making it increasingly difficult for new players to get into dungeon groups.

I say “dark day” because if you weren’t running the elite you weren’t going to get into any PUG groups for end game content. While we may have a difference of opinion as to its impact on the game anytime a single skill or build completely replaces all the others in a game its definitely not a positive thing.

Dramen Maidria.1034:

I say “dark day” because if you weren’t running the elite you weren’t going to get into any PUG groups for end game content. While we may have a difference of opinion as to its impact on the game anytime a single skill or build completely replaces all the others in a game its definitely not a positive thing.

I think you’re being a drama queen. I played Guild Wars for seven years, I ran a guild that did balanced DoA HM and DoASC almost exclusively. Ursan was an easy way to clear end game content, if you bothered to look for groups clearing it the normal way you would have found plenty. They would have probably wiped though ;D

-EDIT- Getting off topic here, what you’re doing is really cool, glad to see people helping out those who want to learn

RagingDragon.9475:

Great Idea Dramen,

My guild currently does the same thing for our members, but we would be interested in teaming up with you for this to help the community. Let me know if you need any help.

Cheers

I’ll definitely message you in game, it seems the community could use something like this. Dungeons can be a lot of fun once you know what you’re doing and it makes me sad to see all these people who are being shut out for various reasons. I almost want to cry or kill a puppy every time I see someone say you have to be 80 in full exotics to do Ascalonian Catacombs.

They.9516:

I think you’re being a drama queen. I played Guild Wars for seven years, I ran a guild that did balanced DoA HM and DoASC almost exclusively. Ursan was an easy way to clear end game content, if you bothered to look for groups clearing it the normal way you would have found plenty. They would have probably wiped though ;D

I’ll admit I was biased against it and my tone might sound different than I intend but that content was supposed to be hard, and that elite trivialized it. I don’t want to clog up this thread with a discussion about the Ursan Days but I do appreciate you expressing your opinion in a polite manner. Drama Queen was a bit harsh but I kinda asked for it by using the phrase “dark day”, some things just sound different in your head. I also growing up refused to use cheat codes for games so things that make content way too easy always leave a bad taste in my mouth. I was that glutton for punishment that wouldn’t use god mode in Doom or Doom 2, back when games created a level of frustration you don’t see anymore, lol.

They.9516:

-EDIT- Getting off topic here, what you’re doing is really cool, glad to see people helping out those who want to learn

Lol, we were apparently trying to get this back on topic at the same time.

This is a great idea and exactly what I am looking for. Sign me up!

Good stuff man. I’m constantly teaching guild mates dungeons. Ill post “looking for 2 more for fotm level 10”. Then a guildy will say ill go, so I invite. Turns out his height at level chat is a 33 necro, the other 3 say let’s do it and I can’t kick a guildy for level, that’s not right. And we usually have a good run. Actually it’s a really fun run because watching people that aren’t use to dungeons is interesting. Especially in fotm, you can really start to see some improvement in there play. Teaching is frustrating and some people won’t listen( I’ve had some horror stories, especially the dredge fractal, some people love aggroing him from behind). I love teaching though when they have team speak. Chatting with typing is hate and confusing during fights. With ts, its just so much more fun and easier, but some people refuse to use it ?

I am level 30 and I have never even seen a dungeon. what level does dungeons start. I have only been playing a few weeks and still learning the game.

This is really an awesome idea, and exactly what I’m looking for. I’m definitely interested. I normally always shy away from dungeons because I don’t have much experience doing them. But something like this can serve as an excellent learning experience for me with the added bonus of being in a friendly environment.

Sign me up!

This is really awesome! I for one get stressed out beyond belief in dungeons and so therefore don’t go in unless absolutely necessary. I’ve been kicked with no explanation other than being a “noob” and it’s disheartening to say the least. I will keep you all in mind next time! Hey maybe I can actually have fun in a dungeon, something I never thought possible.

Awesome it seems.. Yeah but you need to be extra patient if you want to make this idea happen. Also you need a lot of friends who support you in this which i defenitely say that people will support this idea so you wont have so much troubles finding friends.
This is one of the most beautiful idea i ve ever heard. Really good luck with that

Great idea. There are a lot of guilds that do this, but it’s not always easy for people to find them. Until now

Thanks, Stephane, for making this a stickie.

Stephane thank you! I was actually going to ask if other guilds were interested in doing the same thing and if we could make a list which could be stickied, it always makes me sad to see new people to dungeons so frustrated in the early dungeons because they just aren’t getting help with the mechanics. We all got molested the first time we went into a dungeon, and sadly some people have forgotten that.

Cool idea. I’ve been playing since a couple of the BWEs and there’s some dungeons I still haven’t, but would like to try out. I’m not sure I’d join because of fear of embarrassment though, haha!

The Knights of Ares just hosted our first “learn this dungeon” weekend.

We had a great showing of 15 people who were new to dungeons and wanted to learn.
Including Cavendish who posted looking for a “Dungeon Mentor”.

If you are interested in joining us for the next one, send us a message in game or leave a reply in our guild forum post.

Good luck and happy dungeoning.

May I refer players to you all or your guilds? I often spend time in game trying to mentor new players, but I don’t have teamspeak or much in the way of guild resources. It would be great if I could direct them to more experienced/optimized players somehow.

ArtC.1827:

May I refer players to you all or your guilds? I often spend time in game trying to mentor new players, but I don’t have teamspeak or much in the way of guild resources. It would be great if I could direct them to more experienced/optimized players somehow.

Sure, we are currently doing weekly runs for non-members.
They can contact us in game, through our website or through here.

hey guys,

i’m patching up my game right now. i got this game on release but stopped playing after around level 35 or so on my thief, because i was so excited to get to the first dungeon and we all know how that one went.

i came back and played for a little bit a few months ago and got my mesmer up to around 30ish or so but had to quit due to not enough time for school. i also did another run of AC on my thief which went surprisingly smooth — so i tried to do another one, and it went pretty bad, again.

my interest in this game is mostly in PvE and to an extent, WvW. i’d like to learn to do the dungeons without being downed the entire time and such. i tried watching videos (strife’s?) but i don’t believe he goes through story mode for each one, at least not that he saw. i don’t really understand a lot of the mechanics of this game, i guess, in regards to the buffs/debuffs/combos/etc, as well as which attacks to avoid and how to avoid certain traps and whatnot. furthermore, i have not a single clue as to a good build pre-80 for doing dungeons, and i’m hoping to either play thief or mesmer, probably mesmer. use to be interested in d/d elementalist after daphoenix’s videos but it seems like they’re less popular than they once were, and upon trying to level one, i found myself frustrated pretty early because it takes so long to learn all the different combos and such since there are four different skill sets.

i’m on JQ and as i understand it, server transfers are not free anymore and i’m not interested in paying to move off, but i’d be interested in joining some of your runs soon, hopefully. i just have to figure out what i want to play first and on that note, i’d also like to chat with someone knowledgeable about the game/classes in regards to PvE so that i can get a feel for how each class is in PvE. for example, which are going to be more ranged or melee, which are going to be downed more, which are going to do more damage vs support via healing, condition removal, buffs or anything else that may be in this game that i don’t know about.

anyway, sorry for the long post, but if anyone is interested in helping me out it’d be very much appreciated. i really liked this game but it’s hard to learn when groups fall apart after the first wipe and no one in the group is willing to give advice to make it better.

Hey Slantize,

First off, welcome back to GW2. PUG’s(Pick Up Groups) are really a hit or miss. You have no way to determine skill level and patience threshold before you enter a dungeon. And unfortunately in society now a days, patience is a virtue that is rarely practiced. Now don’t get me wrong PUG’s can be fantastic, but you just need to be aware what you are getting into. Which is why I recommend joining a dungeon guild over GW2LFG, there are plenty of these types of guilds on every server and they are usually helpful.

Also Strife’s videos are not good learning material for the “new to dungeons”. They are videos of an optimized team, with optimized builds, that have the best gear available, and know all of the strategies already, because they have already run that dungeon 100 times. Which makes them an unfair comparison for the average player.

Not to mention that they are also running level 80’s. As level 80 they will have access to gear that boosts 3 sets of stats, they will have more traits available, as well as having more of their utility skills unlocked. All of this means that they will actually have a significant boost in their survivability and damage from the average “new to dungeons” player. So don’t be discouraged if you are running into difficulties.

If you want you can sent me a message in game and we can get you into our next “learning dungeons” run. And I’ll have one of my officers give you some pointers for the profession you are using. We will be doing AC this Saturday, so as long as you have a level 35+ profession you can join us.

ArtC.1827:

May I refer players to you all or your guilds? I often spend time in game trying to mentor new players, but I don’t have teamspeak or much in the way of guild resources. It would be great if I could direct them to more experienced/optimized players somehow.

Sure by all means you can refer them to message me or any other person in this thread speaking for their guild. I am hoping as this thread grows we’ll have more guilds responding to it and willing to help the community. WoW was infamous for a poor community regarding matters like this (speaking in a general sense of course) and its great that this has already seen such support.

Slantize people like you are the exact reason I wanted to do this, there is no reason you should be forced to feel like you can’t do dungeons because you don’t know the mechanics unique to this game yet. Just like any game there are good PUGs out there and bad PUGs out there, and of course elitist PUGs out there. You should message any of the people speaking for their guilds in this thread, or all of them since you can be in multiple guilds, and get advice on effective setups for people either new to dungeons or builds not dependent on grand master traits to work. Even mentoring I will often bring in low level alts to the runs to show them that the run can go smooth as long as you know how to play your class and how to handle the specific encounters. While speed running has become popular it isn’t the only way to run dungeons, and it definitely isn’t the way if you’re not even comfortable running dungeons.

i definitely plan to do that, and do appreciate responses!

i’m having a lot of fun in the game again so far. i’m leveling up a thief (again) because i don’t really remember how to play thief, and also because i wanted to be asura. almost level 20, hope to be high enough to start dungeons sometime this weekend. i have saturday off so i think i’ll get quite a bit of playtime in then.

there’s some things i’m still confused about in the game, though. i know about combo fields and combo finishers — but, for example, i’ve been doing lots of group events: in the human starting area, i did the cave troll, oak, and wasp queen several times, and i’ve been basically farming the centaur events in kessex hills for a bit, starting at the bridge, then the three lieutenants, then the big champion. so, with all these people doing all of these events, and me playing a d/d condition thief, i find myself causing lots effects from using my bleed skill (i forget what it’s called but i believe it’s a whirling finisher…don’t shoot me if i’m wrong!) most or all of which are cleansing bolts, burning bolts and other “bolts”. i have no idea what these “bolts” are. i can only assume that they’re basically just projectiles that hit either friendly targets or enemy targets, but with so many people having so many spell effects going on, i can’t see exactly what is happening with these bolts, lol. how do they target things? if i get burning bolts, are those boltkittenting all enemies within, say, 15 yards or something? what about cleansing bolts?

anyway, hopefully this weekend and maybe tomorrow since i don’t work too much i’ll get some playtime in and be able to start doing other things. there’s a lot of really cool stuff in this game that i want to be able to explore and participate in. i like essentially all of the fundamental things in this game, i just need to learn mechanics and such so i can experience everything.

Add me to the list!
I took a long break from the game, and the last time I “did” dungeons, they were very buggy and my party could never get in.

I play a Lv 80 engineer, but I don’t mind if others are lower level.
It’s difficult to find groups that aren’t speed runners (even gw2lfg), and to me that takes the fun out of the game… and makes it so I don’t understand what’s going on.

I’m more interested in Honor of the Waves and Sorrow’s Embrace, but I’ll team up for other dungeons too.

Firstly, thank you to everyone who has supported this idea and another thank you to Stephane Lo Presti for stickying this thread for easier access. Judging from large influx to my followers list there are several people interested that haven’t contacted me yet. If other guilds would like to also participate in helping the community in this regard please post in this thread, it would be great if the community stepped up to show not just new players but older players who have shied away from this aspect of the game that this MMO has a great community that is willing to help everyone learn and not scoff at people who are currently struggling with the same things we all struggled with at the beginning. This thread has seen great response so far and I am hoping it continues to do so.

The Knights of Ares just hosted our 2nd “learn this dungeon” weekend.

We took 15 people who contacted us, through AC on Saturday morning, and it was a great success. We will be hosting another one this upcoming Saturday for FoTM.

If you are interested in joining us next Saturday, send us a message in game or leave a reply in our guild forum post.

Good luck and happy dungeoning.

I will certainly be in contact as I have half a dozen mid 50 LVL characters and have yet to run a dungeon to conclusion (hangs head in shame….). I’ve tried AC story with several characters and the pickup groups I get in slowly degenerate to yelling, profanity and frustrated players leaving.

I want to play the content, but frankly I’ve been shamed away by my past experiences, so I just pretend the content isn’t there.

great idea! id join u guys – hard to ‘learn on the go’

I’ve lost count how many times I’ve told groups before joining up, before going into whatever dungeon, and even during that I’m completely new to them and I’ve still gotten harassed, yelled at, etc. by other players. Its to a point where I almost want to uninstall the game because I cannot stand that sort of attitude in something that’s supposed to be fun. At one point, everyone was brand new and so many people do not remember this fact. I will definitely be contacting the person that started the thread about these runs, thank you for putting them together.

The Knights of Ares just hosted our 3nd “learn this dungeon” weekend this past Saturday. We took 8 people who had contacted us, through FoTM on Saturday morning, and it was a lot of fun. The best part about learning FoTM is that there is no level requirement, though we do recommend a minimum level of 30, so you can have access to your elite skills. We will be hosting another FoTM run this upcoming Saturday.

If you are interested in joining us next Saturday, send us a message in game or leave a reply in our guild forum post.

Good luck and happy dungeoning.

Not a new player but pretty new still to dungeons. Ill be sending a message for this. Thank you so much for the offer. Im sometimes left ashamed to ask to join a group because I dont want to burden anyone with being a newbie lol. So thank you

Ps Does it matter Server or Location? Im from Australia on Dragon Brand. Cheers x

Server only matters if you are European.

As NA and EU servers cannot play together. Me and my guild are North American, so you will be able to join us. We are actually on Dragonbrand as well.

I have never set foot in a dungeon and would love to have a go but due to my erratic playing times it’s quite difficult for me to set aside the time to have a bakitten a dungeon, (also like others have said, it’s now got to the point where I don’t even want to try and pug due to the hassle of having to explain that i’m a newbie and to go slow) so this sounds like a brilliant idea! I will definately be in touch, thank you kind sir!!

I’d love to participate in this!!
What are the best EST times to do this?

I’m lookin to learn COE if any runs of that are going down let me know!

Justfor.6018:

I’d love to participate in this!!
What are the best EST times to do this?

We run learning groups for the public on Saturday mornings (8 am till noon, MST).
Just message me during that time and I can get you into a group.

We also do runs for our “newer” guild members most nights, so you can message me then as well and I can get you in a group if we have room.

Be sure to message me in game, whether by mail or whisper, if you’re interested in running dungeons with my guild. I also have the capability to stream the runs if groups fill and you’d still like to at least see how the runs go if can’t get into a group.
Servers don’t really matter, this game is great about being friendly with cross server grouping.

Dramen Maidria.1034:

RagingDragon.9475:

Great Idea Dramen,

My guild currently does the same thing for our members, but we would be interested in teaming up with you for this to help the community. Let me know if you need any help.

Cheers

I’ll definitely message you in game, it seems the community could use something like this. Dungeons can be a lot of fun once you know what you’re doing and it makes me sad to see all these people who are being shut out for various reasons. I almost want to cry or kill a puppy every time I see someone say you have to be 80 in full exotics to do Ascalonian Catacombs.

The thing is after having done AC expl and CM expl you need perfect setup Groups with the best gear possible if you wanna even complete the freaking dungeon which i this is absolute terrible balancing that the lowest lvl dungeons are the most impossible where CoF and Arah are some of the easiest.

my guild is pretty slow and dont really do any dungeons which really anoy’s me cuz my characters need the gear from AC expl and there are no-one on my server there will do it, its just CoF p1 all day

AC is really easy as long as you know the encounters. I took a party of Necro’s through it a week ago, and while it took longer than it should of, we still managed to clear it without any wipes. The same goes for any dungeon really, I personally am not a fan of CM but it is not that difficult if you know the encounters, and set the appropriate skills ahead of time. But due to this PUG’s tend to be counter-productive!

And Yes, we still monitor this thread and help people if we are contacted!

I used to do all three paths of CM every night so I’ll field that one. CM is more about understanding the encounters than group composition, although having reflects will speed up the dungeon greatly. In my experience PUGs mess this dungeon up mainly by being rigid in their utility skills and not adjusting as the situation requires depending on group composition as well as not focus firing. Just about any group composition can do any path of CM in around 20 minutes a path give or take a few minutes. CM is honestly the easiest dungeon now that AC has been revamped although
AC is only hard when you’re not familiar with it. Don’t believe people who tell you the Spider Queen is only beatable by stacking below the stairs, that Kholer has to be skipped, or that Rumblus can only be fought by stacking at that pillar before you go down to his area. I regularly bring new people into AC and have them fight the Spider Queen in the room she is in, kill Kholer, and charge Rumblus like bad@sses and while mistakes sometimes get made by new players we always finish relatively painlessly. Its just a matter of familiarity and repetition.

Thanks to all of you creating an amazing environment for new player like me to freely ask questions without being judged.
We all are once a newbee and its so nice to see someone like you all helping each other to educate.
I’m still in my low lvl (18) and obviously not ready for a dungeons but would love to be taught and educated in the near future.

I like too see people with good attitudes towards players that are new to dungeons I cant tell you how many times I have done a dungeon with pugs that are straight up hateful to new players.

I am on Sea of Sorrows and wish to learn how to Dungeon/Fractal. My guild and I tried once (AC Story) and got so badly obliterated we never tried again. Another time, a group (I was not with) tried Fractals and had the same problem. I would like to learn how to do this content, then perhaps teach the rest of the guild. Is there anyone on that server who can help?